Understanding the Economics of Internships: Should you do an unpaid intern ?

P.S. Most of the references/advices are for B.Tech/BE students.

The time of #internships are here. LinkedIn is flooded with posts of GSoC admits, corporate offers, etc. While software development related opportunities are widespread, core engineering students struggle to secure decent ones.

Personally, #internships were a great way of exposure to real world projects and building my profile but the fun part is, most of them were #unpaid. Hold on before you assume that I support #unpaid interns for exploitation.

Recently there has been a lot of debate if doing #unpaid internships are really worth it. Let me tell you my part before I come to it.

I was inclined towards research at the end of my 2nd year. People who apply for research internships would know how difficult it is secure one, let alone paid.

1. My first internship experience was under the supervision of a professor at IIT Delhi. I worked on Retinal Image Analysis for about 2 months. During that period, I learnt about ML, DL and Computer Vision from scratch and probably learnt much more than I did in the first two years at college.
2. The aforementioned experience helped me get an Research Assistantship with a professor on campus in the next sem. The project was in a similar domain and I built up on the knowledge I gained during my summer internship to compile the results & findings into an research article. You can read it here.
3. Besides the aforementioned project, I was also working with an early-stage startup to build their #nlp backend, a #chatbot capable of resolving queries and grievance redressal for POSH Cases. This was a remote work for most part of the time except for a week of in office.
4. All of the above experiences helped me secure an internship offer from AIRBUS for the 2020 summer at their Digital Transformation Office for a Deep Learning based project. There was just one PI and almost 80% of the duration was spent on discussing my previous projects and how I went about them. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, they had to withdraw their internship program globally because of myriad reasons.

Quite frankly, none of the aforementioned #internships fetched me a direct stipend. (The 4th one was an exception xD). Yet, the ROI on time and effort invested was worth it. So, how did I manage it ?

For the first internship, I paid for the boarding, lodging and other costs through a scholarship money that I had received and prize money from a couple of hackathons. 2nd one was in my own institute hence no extra expenditures. Moreover, being able to publish a paper out of the work I did was like a cherry on the top. The third one was a remote opportunity like I said and for that one week, all costs were covered.

During placements, once again during my PIs at #qualcomm, there was a lot of discussion on my resume and the work I did and questions related to those concepts. There was less of typical DSA and other questions. Eventually, they offered me the role.

So, should YOU be doing an unpaid internship ? The answer lies in understanding the #economics behind it.

For most companies that offer internships via campus recruitment, the net amount they spend in hiring and training interns for 2-3 months outweigh the economic value one adds during that period. Most of these companies hire for the purpose of :

1. Maintaining good relations with the universities to keep alive the channel of talent pool.
2. To look for potential full time additions.

Rarely do the interns work on a production line project. ( This might a bit different for six-month or longer duration interns though. )

Then, there are internship job postings on portals like LinkedIn, angel.co etc. where not a lot of training happens. Interns are expected to directly contribute to ongoing project. Mostly these projects are related to companies business activities and hence, in return of the business value generated, the interns get compensated monetarily and/or otherwise. The scenario changes if you are looking for research interns at universities. Barring those exclusive scholarship programs, very few actually pay. Even less, if we just consider Indian Universities. It completely depends on the professor and the project funding.

Not everyone secures an on-campus or paid off-campus internship due to imbalance between supply (candidates looking for interns) and demand (opportunities). A lot of them are compelled to look for other opportunities, and often take up unsavory roles. Companies know this very well. Now, mostly all company internships are paid unless otherwise. If the company is asking you to pay upfront, then PLEASE DO NOT. Either it is a just a training program or the company is using you to get their work done for free which is illegal. Immediately report that organization.

Remember: Companies pay/should pay you when the time and effort you invested directly links to their business activities. Anything otherwise is not legal.

What should you do if you have not been able to secure an internship yet ?

For 3rd years, since doing a summer internship is compulsory, the best option would be to pursue something that is aligned to your area of interest for pursuing Graduate Studies or your job aspirations - Software Dev/Core Engineering/Design etc. be it unpaid or paid.

For 2nd years/interested first years, since doing a summer internship is not compulsory, your focus should be on exploring the options more and figuring out what is that you would like to build your initial career in. Monetary compensation should not be the priority.

The most important takeaway from an internship is how much you learnt while doing that project - it could be learning a new framework, a new tool, a new software, a new course, a new programming language or about the industry in general.

The #wfh scenario has opened up lot more possibilities to work with various groups around the world. Even if things were to go back to normal in a couple of years, which it will, here is something you can do to fund living expenses during your internships:

1. Keep participating in hackathons and online competitions. Save the prize money you are earning instead of splurging it.
2. If you are good at some particular skill, look at the possibility of becoming part-time educators with Ed-Tech orgs like Unacademy , Camp K12 etc.
3. Keep a look out for various scholarships being made available and apply away.

A few pointers on avoiding predatory internships:

1. Verify the company history, read reviews on glassdoor etc. about the culture of the company.
2. DO NOT pay for doing an internship. Immediately report any such listing that you come across.
3. If research internship is what you aspire to do, talk to the prof/guide beforehand about the possibility of having your name included in the work is published. If the prof does not say a yes, DO NOT go ahead.
4. Ask people in your network if the founders/mentors/owners of the company are trustworthy. Usually if the organization is known for scrupulous activities, word will be around the corner.
5. If the organization is hiring unpaid interns on a mass level, probably better to avoid it.
6. If the organization is building a product, and the work they ask you to do will be directly adding value to their business but they refuse to compensate you, avoid it.

P.S. Monetary compensation is just one form of benefit that you can while doing an internship. Building good professional network, doing credible work and getting it noticed either through publications or some sort of media, earning goodwill & recommendations (cannot emphasize how important is this), learning about the latest technology being used and how work is done in that particular industry are some of the collateral gains I can think of.